“Very funny, Thiru. You know why I bought down here.”
Eight months ago, Gerry had been assured by doctors that his mother had less than two months to live. Her only desire was to die in her home, Gerry’s “boyhood” home. Gerry, ever the dutiful son, figured he could grant that wish. Two months passed. Then three. At month four, the doctors admitted they were fallible and that his mother might live longer than expected—not at home, not forever, but she could remain there for the foreseeable future (which, of course, is an oxymoron; the future cannot be seen). Gerry decided that buying an apartment in Baltimore would solve all his problems. His New York apartment sold quickly, despite the kitchen and bathrooms, and he snapped up this place, fully furnished, from the CFO of some smoke-and-mirrors tech company who was going through a bad divorce.
His mother died on December 31, three days after he closed on the Baltimore apartment. A soft, gentle woman, she had spent much of her life yielding to others, but when she really wanted something, she was stubborn. She wanted to die at home, with Gerry under her roof. So she did.
Now four weeks later, Thiru, always the full-service agent, is here for what he insists on calling the memorial service, which consisted of picking up Gerry’s mother’s ashes and taking them to Petit Louis for lunch. Not that his mother ever ate at Petit Louis, but back in the 1960s and ’70s she chose the old restaurant in this location, Morgan Millard, for every milestone occasion. Gerry’s graduation from middle school, Gerry’s scholarship to Gilman, Gerry’s acceptance to Princeton. Her birthdays. Once, only once, Gerry had persuaded her to breach her loyalty to Morgan Millard, insisting that they dine in New York on the day his second novel was published. He had taken her to Michael’s; she had seen a famous anchorwoman, then pressed Gerry to approach the blond bobblehead and ask her to feature him on her show. Gerry had declined.
At Petit Louis, a perfectly respectable French bistro, he could not help wondering if Thiru was judging it. Gerry actually prefers this restaurant to its New York counterparts, Odeon and Pastis. It’s not so much of a scene. He prefers quite a few things in Baltimore, or maybe it’s simply that it seems important now to keep a running list in his head of things that are better in Baltimore than New York. Movies: it’s almost unheard of to encounter a sold-out movie here. Weather: the winters are a tad milder, shorter. Grocery stores? The Whole Foods on Smith Avenue is just as awful as the one on the Upper West Side, so that’s a push.
Thiru proclaimed himself charmed by Petit Louis, by all of North Baltimore. He seems less charmed as they approach Gerry’s new home in Locust Point, a working-class neighborhood that is allegedly gentrifying, with the Vue as exhibit A. Thiru is uncharacteristically silent as they pull into the garage, leave the Zipcar in its designated space, take the elevator to the main floor, where Gerry picks up the mail from Phylloh at the front desk. Thiru does brighten at the sight of Phylloh, a curvy girl whose ethnicity is a mystery to Gerry, although he knows that he must never inquire how she has come by those eyes, that skin, that hair. Would Thiru be allowed to ask? Is it wrong to wonder if Thiru would be allowed to ask? The modern world is forever flummoxing Gerry.
He turns the key and pushes the button marked ph, although Gerry will never call his apartment a penthouse, never. “You can go straight to the apartment from the garage, of course,” he says. “If you have the key card.”
“Of course,” Thiru says.
Thiru’s bright eyes continue to appraise everything. It’s almost like being in the room for the unbearably long periods when Thiru has one of Gerry’s new manuscripts.
“Can you imagine what an apartment like this would cost in New York?” Gerry asks. Tacky to talk about money, but Thiru knows to the penny how much money Gerry has earned. He had to certify Gerry’s net worth when he bought the New York co-op in 2001.
“Yes,” Thiru says. “But—then it would be in New York, Gerry.”
“I’ll be back,” he says. “I need to stay here a year to two years so I don’t lose too much money when I resell. And then I’ll downsize, maybe try another neighborhood. I was getting tired of the Upper West Side anyway.”
“Is real estate appreciating here, then? I thought the city had been rather, um, challenged in recent years. There were those riots? And the murder rate is rather high? I feel as if I read a piece in the Times about it not that long ago.”
“Millennials are drawn to Baltimore,” Gerry says, parroting something he heard, although he can’t remember from whom. “It’s the most affordable city in the northeast right now. Real estate has been a little soft since, um, Freddie Gray.”
He does not add that it’s a fraught choice in Baltimore, whether to refer to the events of 2015 as the riots or the uprising. Gerry can’t bring himself to use either term.
“Hmmmm.” Thiru begins pacing the top floor, not bothering to ask if he can look around. He is a tiny man with an enormous head, only eight years older than Gerry. But the two men have been together for forty years, since Thiru read one of Gerry’s stories in the Georgia Review, and the age gap remains significant to Gerry. Thiru has longish hair that he wears in a brushed-back, leonine mane. The once blue-black hair is silvery now, the peak has receded, but there is still quite a bit of it, thick and shiny. His suits are bespoke. They probably have to be, given his height. He still terrifies Gerry on some level, although their relationship has outlasted seven wives (three for Gerry, four for Thiru).
“Are you working on something, Gerry?”
“You know I don’t talk about my work in progress.”
“Fiction.”
For a second, Gerry assumes this is an accusation, not a question, but that’s probably because it is a fiction that he is working. He hasn’t written for months. Reasonable, he thinks, under the circumstances, although he was able to write through every other difficult period of his life.
“Of course. What else? You know I have little patience for literary criticism right now. Most American writers bore me.”
“I thought with your mother gone, you might consider that memoir we talked about.”
“You talked about. The memoir is a debased form.”
“But it’s such a good story, the thing with your father.”
“No, Thiru. It’s sad and banal. And I used what interested me about the situation for my first novel. I have no desire to revisit the material.”
“It’s just that—your publisher would like you to sign a new contract, but they are entitled to know what you’re working on.”
“And when I have finished a new book—the new book—we shall. I don’t like advances, Thiru. That’s what undercut my second and third novels, that’s what made Dream Girl, and everything that followed, different. I won’t take money up front for an unwritten book. I can’t—”
He stops, fearful that he is about to say the thing he doesn’t want to say out loud: I can’t write anymore. It’s not true. It can’t be true. But given the circumstances of his mother’s death, how can he not worry about receiving a similar diagnosis one day? This thing runs in families.
“Well, the view is really something,” Thiru says, his admiration sincere. “In fact, I’m not sure I could work with such a panorama spread out before me. I like the fact that you can see the working part of the harbor, not just the fancy stuff.”
“This used to be a grain silo,” Gerry says. “The site of the building, I mean.”
“Good thing you’re not gluten intolerant.”